Parenthood Can Create Marital Anxiety

Couples say they know it'll be hard to adjust to a baby. But they don't know how hard. And they usually don't know why it's so hard.

There are indeed the trials of exhaustion, loss of freedom, feelings of incompetence.

But the real killer is the marital warfare that often comes along with parenthood.

Feedings, sleep schedules and the like are troublesome, "but what causes the marital distress is not those problems, but how people react to the problems," says clinical psychologist Brad E. Sachs. "And what couples find is that they wind up really polarized within the marriage, because they're responding to these problems in ways that create less, rather than more, resolution."

People expect that parenthood will make them more mature, says Sachs, who practices in Columbia, Md. But becoming a parent "makes us more childlike. That's ultimately a tremendous opportunity for people and for a marriage, but at first it's very, very disorienting and very unsettling," says Sachs, author of "Things Just Haven't Been the Same" (Morrow, $20).

Couples often have the idea that a child's birth should usher in a period of bliss. When they turn up at his office, they feel there's something wrong with them "that they're not responding with a completely pure sense of love and tolerance to their partner and child," Sachs says.

But having a child elicits a lot of negative emotions, which we often are uncomfortable acknowledging.

Parenthood inevitably brings anxiety, and anxiety underscores weaknesses in a marriage. The way people respond to anxiety is what is so ruinous, Sachs says.

Typically, we try to fight off anxiety by focusing on what other people are doing, Sachs says. When couples are upended by emotions, one person will try to force the spouse to change. The

destructive "I'm right, you're wrong" mindset takes over.

A more helpful approach is to try to figure out what it is that's causing the anxiety, and how it relates to past experiences, Sachs says.

For example, one of Sachs' patients found it impossible to tolerate his 3-year-old's temper tantrums. When the man was a 3-year-old, his father died. The tantrums of his 3-year-old resurrected the pain of his own out-of-control grief, which he hoped had been left in the past.

Such a therapy-driven approach is, he admits, not a quick-fix cure. It takes work, as do his other suggestions. Couples in conflict, he says, should:

Pay attention to their own role in problems. "A good example is the mother who complains she has too much to do, and wants her husband to help out, but doesn't draw a bottom line as to what she will and won't do. ... She needs to realize if she can focus on changing her behavior, she can guarantee his behavior will change, that it makes it much more likely than just focusing on his behavior."

Resolve conflicts with relatives. "I think that whether grandparents are alive or dead, or geographically close or distant, the family as a whole has to be in tiptop shape" for a couple to make a good transition to parenthood. "So it means dealing with parents and siblings as honestly as possible and finishing up old business." This is essential, he says -- "as long as the issues aren't dealt with, it's just passed down from generation to generation."

"Be open" to conflict. "One of the things I write about in the book is that most of the worst conflicts occur because of the fights we don't have, rather than the ones we do have," Sachs says. "Couples have to be able to feel comfortable with the range of emotions they're going to experience during parenthood and feel open and respectful about dealing with their partner. So you're not going to feel just love and tranquility about parenthood -- you're going to be bored and irritated and enraged and sorrowful, and if couples can create this big emotional landscape to operate in, there's a much better chance they're going to grow in this experience rather than collapse under it."

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